James A. Garfield Memorial

President James A. Garfield, a resident of nearby Mentor, Ohio, was shot in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. He died on September 19, 1881. Garfield himself had expressed the wish to be buried at Lake View Cemetery, and the cemetery offered a burial site free of charge to his widow, Lucretia Garfield. Mrs. Garfield agreed to bury her husband at Lake View. Even before Garfield's funeral, plans were laid by his friends and admirers for a grand tomb to be erected at a high point in the cemetery. The Garfield Memorial Committee selected the highest point in the cemetery in June 1883 for the president's final resting place. Lake View Cemetery built a road around the memorial in early 1885 and began work on cutting a road from the Euclid Gate to the memorial site later that fall. The cemetery also began work on making improvements to the landscape, water, and drainage around the site. ==Design and construction==

inside the memorial The tomb was designed by architect George Keller in the Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque Revival styles. All the stone for the monument came from the quarries of the Cleveland Stone Company, and was quarried locally. The exterior reliefs, which depict scenes from Garfield's life, were done by Caspar Buberl. Its cost, $135,000 ($ in dollars), was funded entirely through private donations. Part of the memorial's funding came from pennies sent in by children throughout the country. The round tower is in diameter and high. The interior features stained glass windows and window like panes representing the original 13 colonies, plus the state of Ohio, along with panels depicting War and Peace; and it was dedicated on May 30, 1890. The caskets of the President and Lucretia Garfield lie in a crypt on full display beneath the memorial, along with the ashes of their daughter (Mary "Mollie" Garfield Stanley-Brown [1867–1947]) and son-in-law Joseph Stanley Brown. Lucretia Garfield died on March 13, 1918, and was interred in the Garfield Memorial on March 21. ==Operational history==

Since the Garfield Memorial was private, the committee overseeing its operation charged an entry fee of 10 cents per person to defray its maintenance costs. Lake View also began cleaning, repairing, and rehabilitating the memorial. Lake View Cemetery spent $5 million in 2016 and 2017 conserving, repairing, and upgrading the memorial's structural elements. This included reinforcing beams and columns in the basement. In 2019, the cemetery began a multi-million-dollar project to clean the exterior and repoint any damaged or missing mortar. It is the first time in the memorial's history that the exterior has been cleaned. The memorial closes every winter on November 19 (President Garfield's birthday) and reopens in April. ==See also==